


Fire Fire Burning Bright

by mydetheturk



Category: One Piece
Genre: Akuma no Mi | Devil Fruit, Baltigo, Gen, Sabo is a Natural Disaster waiting to happen, Sabo is an Angry Man, Slight spoilers, The Revolutionary Army (One Piece), does dragon have a devil fruit?, no beta we die like men, we just don't know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24474343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydetheturk/pseuds/mydetheturk
Summary: Sabo's flame burns hot, burns bright. It burns to match the anger inside, and oh,ohis Sabo full of anger.
Relationships: Monkey D. Dragon & Sabo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 47





	Fire Fire Burning Bright

**Author's Note:**

> title takes cues from "The Tyger" by William Blake

Sabo seethes with anger, with hate, and fire builds under his skin, threatens to spill out, to make his outside reflect what’s on the inside. He burns hot now, almost too hot. Bursting into flame beds the turbulence, makes it ebb slightly. One slight move, one _wrong_ move, and he’d be a wildfire, burning bright and hot and long, sweeping across the lands. Not the ocean – he hasn’t been able to cross her freely, not truly, not in years, and now that ever so slight, nearly non-existent trepidation has become a thing of respectable wariness. No one controls the ocean but herself, and everyone is to respect her.

Sabo’s fire burns white hot, the same as their magnesium flares, could turn into a firestorm at any given second, if he gave it the thought.

He wonders if this is how Dragon feels all the time, with his storm and thunder and lightning. Like if he just gave up control, he could change _everything_.

Then he remembers Grey Terminal, the screams and cries of the residents. And he reigns in the feeling, and reigns in the fire, and forcibly keeps control.

Sabo knows he’s worried Koala enough with his fire, so he goes to the next best person.

Dragon is at the prow of the ship, where he always is, steady and stable like a port in a storm, despite being in the middle of a storm in the middle of the ocean and on their way to the Grand Line.

Sabo had been the one to set fire to their base in Baltigo, on Dragon’s order, had burned white hot and _angry_ , and only the knowledge that he was keeping the others safe from Blackbeard kept him from regret.

“How?” he asks, itchy and antsy in ways he’s not been in years. His fire is ready to burn him from the inside out, ready to set him ablaze and everyone with him.

“You learn,” Dragon says, and that? That’s the least helpful thing he’s said, also in years. There’s a crackle, not unlike the fire within him but distinct from Dragon’s lightning, and Sabo is at Dragon’s back-front- _on the deck_ , taken out in a way that he hasn’t been since he was thirteen and had faced everything the regular trainers in the Army had to teach him and he was first fighting Dragon himself.

“You are new, and you are young, and you _will learn_ ,” Dragon says. There’s a rumble of thunder and an uptick of wind and yet the rain slows, and Sabo reigns in his fire once more.

Everyone on the deck of their ship is watching them closely, and Sabo recognizes the _annoyance-exhaustion_ of Koala’s Haki.

“Yes, sir.”

Dragon stares for a moment more and sighs, and something else burns under Sabo’s skin. Sabo looks up at Dragon with a look in his faded blue eyes, one that has Dragon placing a hand – _hand not claw_ – on Sabo’s shoulder.

“We’ll work on it”

And just like that, the fire in Sabo is banked for now; he’s settled inside again, like Dragon had placed earth upon the hearth that was Sabo. There are still embers ready to be brought back with careful application of kindling, but Sabo will let that be up to Dragon.

After all, the man has done a good job of letting Sabo know when fire is needed for the past twelve years.

**Author's Note:**

> i've been feeling upset and unsettled and _angry_ about everything going on in the world lately so i wrote this to try and process how i was feeling.
> 
> I'm still angry
> 
> Stay safe, everyone.


End file.
